Does a viral video show the "first Iranian drone" shot down in Israel in mid-June 2025? No, that's not true: The footage was recorded in Ukraine. It's impossible for it to have documented the Iran-Israel conflict, as it was first posted to the web three years earlier.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on June 13, 2025. It read:
⚠️ BREAKING: First Iranian drone goes down inside Israeli territory.
This is what it looked liked on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot by Lead Stories)
The post was published on the day when Iran sent drones to Israel (archived here) in response to Israel's earlier attack.
The 20-second clip, however, was a horizontally flipped version of the footage that had been online for almost three years by then. On October 17, 2025, Sky News published it (archived here) under the caption explicitly saying that the video showed Kyiv, Ukraine.
Lead Stories independently geolocated the video. It was recorded roughly at this spot at Vasylia Lypkivskoho Street. Here, we see a residential tower, one of the similar buildings making up the complex, whose facade is covered with elements of red, gray and white colors. Its appearance is consistent with that of the building briefly seen on the side of the frame. Just like in the viral footage, the tower is surrounded by much lower and older buildings. Some, however, seem to be either renovated or relatively recently constructed. That includes a blue-and-white building with three dark squares in the middle of it. A brief walk on Google Maps confirms that this building is indeed located within proximity of the tower. Furthermore, on its right, we see another -- white -- matching structure.
(Sources: Sky News, Google Maps screenshots; composite image by Lead Stories)
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks concerning current events are here.
